The power behind the throne?

That's what the NYT is putting out for the guy who is one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Yep, the guy who makes V.P. Dan Quayle look like a scholar is the NYT savior of the Obamacy.

Or, as Mr. Weiner put it in an interview, “Biden brings everything that Rahm Emanuel brings, but the major difference is everyone likes Joe Biden.”

While Mr. Biden has credibility with the Democratic left, his long record in the Senate has enough moments in which he proved willing to work with or give ground to Republicans that they view him as less dogmatic than many other administration officials.

~snip~
Beyond his behind-the-scenes role in negotiating the tax deal with Republicans — a path that Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama decided on in a recent conversation at the White House, aides say — the vice president has also been trying to win Republican votes in the Senate for ratification of the so-called New Start nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

That background for compromise is now being put to use at the White House, from Mr. Biden’s diplomatic mission to try to soothe the angry House Democrats to his secret shuttling between his boss and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, to iron out the tax deal.

~snip~
Once the Republicans take over the House and increase their numbers in the Senate in January, Mr. Biden’s role will widen, White House officials said, as Mr. Obama tries to capitalize on the relationships his gregarious vice president built over the course of 36 years in the Senate.

“If he’s going to try to get anything done in a partisan divide, and a divided Senate, Biden is a tremendous asset because he knows the players, the institution, and he has credibility,” said John Podesta, the chief executive of the Center for American Progress, who led Mr. Obama’s transition team after the 2008 election.

Go read the cloying rest if you want, I need to get a shovel for the cr@p that just spilled out of my monitor.